Growing Caterpillars

Somehow in the flow of everyday life, many of the caterpillars from the broken branch have transitioned to stage 5 and the others are not far behind.  Before long we'll have fewer caterpillars at the cafe and several chrysalis again.

Caterpillars in the Blooms

Ranging in size from barely visible to the naked eye to a quarter inch long, we discovered 7 caterpillars in the buds of the Milkmaid milkweed today.  


The other day we discovered a stem broke off one of the plants and found a dozen caterpillars on it as well.  Most were a half inch long, but one was only an 1/8 inch.

If I managed to correctly count every one we found so far, we have 13 caterpillars in the 1/8 inch size or less and 11 at least half an inch long.   Apparently we missed seeing the full scope of the eggs and didn't realize how early we started getting them.

Of course this is just the beginning of the fall migration season....

Visiting Butterflies And Eggs

Wehave been seeing a #MonarchButterfly fly through on a regular basis.  There is no way of telling if its the same one or one of the ones we released earlier this month.

We have also seen a few eggs again.  It seems the #MonarchButterfly females flying through the cafe have decided the #milkweed in the cafe looks good enough for their babies to eat and laid their eggs on the under side of many of the leaves.  Notably most of the leaves with eggs are Milkmaid #milkweed. The picture was taken at 8 times zoom in order to see both the egg and its details.

Follow along as we participate in the beginnings of the fall #MonarchButterfly migration.

About The Monarch Cafe

The Monarch Cafe is an area in my yard with 4 Milkmaid Milkweed plants, 4 Hello Yellow Milkweed Plants, 4 Cinderella Milkweed Plants, 4 Common Milkweed plants a dozen or so Orange flowered Milkweed plants a few milkweed vines and 1 swamp milkweed.

The Cafe was designed to attract the #MonarchButterfly in all its stages.

Last year with just the orange flowered milkweed, we released 38 #Monarch butterflies.  This year we added the expansion with 17 new milkweed plants.

This year we have found most of our eggs and caterpillars on the Milkmaid milkweed plants, but several of the other varieties have also had eggs on them.  So far this year we have released 13 #Monarch butterflies.

I have been posting pictures on Facebook and Flickr the last couple years and noticed this year the growing popularity of people looking at my pictures and thinking "I could do that".  That is the sentiment I want to inspire.

Last winter a storm in Mexico killed half the #MonarchButterfly population which was already dramatically down from when I "raised" #Monarchs as a kid.  Now there are groups like "Missouri for Monarch" on a campaign to keep the #MonarchButterfly from becoming extinct.

 The sign (in the picture) was a gift from a friend who came up with the name "Monarch Cafe" for the garden, not that the #MonarchButterfly needed the sign to find the garden.

In the posts to come, I will be detailing the #Monarch activity "at the Monarch Cafe".